Not Sure How The Heck I Did This...

[milanuk]

OK, I thought these things were pretty stout... not sure what exactly I did here to cause this to happen. I'd taken the tool head apart this evening, cleaned the die, put everything back together and tightened down the appropriate parts; didn't notice anything amiss. I started sizing and decapping the remainder of a batch of 1k once-fired Winchester commercial brass from brassmanbrass.com, a couple hundred at most. Somewhere in there I had one case go in a little stiff, and got a pretty good squawk as it came out... figured must have had one that didn't get any lube on it somehow, not good, but not something I was going to loose sleep over. Looked at the case, nothing unusual that I noticed. My fingers were a little greasy from the DCL on them from handling the cases, so I rubbed the case down and ran it thru again. Felt perfectly normal. Kept on going. Had a few more like that, and it seemed like the last one was a little harder to lower the ram. Finally, had one that really stuck, and ended up pulling the rim off the case. Stripped everything else off the tool head, got the wrenches out, and screwed the decapper assembly all the way down, then all the way up to get it to finally come free, as something seemed to be holding the case to the decapper/expander mandrel somehow.

When I got the mandrel out, this is what I found:

I'm guessing that thing is hosed... now the big question (besides WTF caused it) is how many cases I have to dig back out of that bucket and re-process before I run them thru the trimmer (assuming the mouths ain't going to be concentric coming off of something like that, knowing my luck).

Any ideas on what I did that would bend a dog leg in the decapper stem?!?

TIA,

Monte

[George]

Rock, or metal chip in case ;-/

[rick t]

was you decapping pin screwed too far down, if a stone was the offending case deprimed?

rick t

[dillon]

The cause was that the case was so thoroughly stuck in the die that it required sufficient pressure to begin to buckle the upper decapping shaft before the case finally broke free.

Call us and we'll mail a replacement to you.

When you apply the case lube, do you let the brass sit for at least 10 minutes before running the cases through a size die? This gives the alcohol carrier time to evaporate so the lube can work effectively.

[milanuk]

Nooo....... I lubed the cases the same way I did the last about 5000 or so... put about three large handfuls of .223 cases in a heavy plastic bag (like the kind brass or bullets come shipped in), flatten everything out, spray w/ DCL, shake and rub it around, turn the bag over, repeat (one or two spritzes each time), shake and rub around on the way over to the press (10ft), and dump them in the case bin. Fold up the bag, set it aside, and start sizing cases. The one that finally got stuck was probably about... 3 minutes or so after being lubed.

I've always wondered about the bit about letting the lube 'dry'... it's lube, it's on the cases, I don't understand how the alcohol carrier adds or detracts to the lubricity of the mix... other than making it thinner, maybe.

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but it seems like the decapping stem must have hit something, maybe a rock or off-center flash hole, to cause it to go 'up' like it did. I understand the case getting stuck, pulling off the rim, all that, but bending the rod was what baked my noodle

TIA,

Monte

[dillon]

The case lube is lanolin, with alcohol as a solvent, and an emulsifying agent. Until the alcohol evaporates, the lubricant is too thin to be effective.